(Del Rey/352 pages/$13.95, trade paper)

Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

It may be sacrilege among the faithful to make such a proclamation, but “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” really isn’t that great of a story. It’s a very fascinating, very interesting premise: A box containing the knowledge of how to gain entrance to an alternate is found; but the problem is, no one but children can understand the “instructions” because as we humans get older, we began to think and reason in a different fashion. It’s a premise that Kuttner cleverly glommed from reading A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes (the title of his story is taken from a stanza of a song in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll). Yes, Mimsy is a clever concept, but as a story, it doesn’t quite work, failing to sustain narrative flow, losing steam and direction about mid-center. At that point, a character named Rex Holloway enters the picture and commits the sin of so many of the scientist characters in 1950s science fiction flicks (and not a few modern SF novels) make, over-explaining this facet or that theory. Check out this excerpt, taken from—I kid you not—nearly two pages of such meandering by the good Dr. Holloway: “The brain’s a colloid, a very complicated machine. We don’t know much about its potentialities. We don’t even know how much it can grasp.” I won’t go on further except to say whatever editor bought the story fell down on the job. A bit more clipping and a genuine classic would have, indeed, been born. As it is, “Mimsy” is still a good short story.

Why such attention to a story written to a story nearly a century ago? Because New Line Cinema has made a film of the Kuttner classic; and because Del Rey has reissued The Best of Henry Kuttner under a new title, The Last Mimzy, deigning to use the filmmaker’s misspelling of mimsy (but as well all know, most filmmakers, and not a few folks in publishing, rarely make smart choices). Despite that clunky middle ground, “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” is a dark and twisty landscape with enough unseen brambles and potholes about (as well a killer ending) that readers will forgive the narrative hiccup.

In Worlds of Wonder, the sublime anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, the Grand Master speculates on the writings of Henry Kuttner and his wife C.L. Moore (after marriage, both writers worked on each other’s stories). Silverberg notes early work was marked by “emotional intensity and evocative coloration” while Kuttner’s fiction was always versatile, clever and technically adept. Leading one to speculate that the stronger parts of “Mimsy,” near the tale’s end, might have been provided by Moore; if so, good on her for elevating the tale from merely clever to artful.

These few nits aside, potential readers should not let the above musings stop them from picking up The Last Mimzy to sample the rest of this best of collection devoted to Kuttner, because there’s plenty to entertain. Such as “The Twonky” (originally published under Kuttner’s Lewis Padgett byline) in which paranoia reigns as characters discover that certain everyday item of entertainment in homes is actually a robot designed to turn humans into bovine-like creatures—or eliminate them (had the story been written a bit later, Kuttner and Moore would no doubt have substituted a television or internet-linked computer, and rightly so). Other highlights include “Two-Handed Engine,” “The Proud Robot” and “Absalom.” In truth, all of the stories in this collection will serve readers well and entertain them beyond their wildest expectations.